Jul272017

Windows Store Adds New Features for Developers ‘Promote apps, Manage prices’ More

The initial availability of several features announced at the Build 2017 to Windows Store is now available to all developers accounts, including more ways to promote apps and drive user acquisition.

Developers can also now create more engaging Store listings with video trailers, for instance. They can also set the exact date and time their app should become available in the Store, control prices more precisely and schedule changes.

Also, when a submission is in progress, it can be publish or delete, and the next submission will show these new pricing, sales and store listing options. Those, using Windows Store Submission API, read the following implications of these changes:

If you manage prices using the Submission API, you’ll have to use new price tiers. To do that, manually update your app or game once, so you can view the new price tiers, accept them, and then update your Submission API code to use these new price tier values, which can be found in the price table on the pricing and availability page in Dev Center, as described above.

The Windows Store submission API does not support all the new Store listing capabilities You can add the new assets using the Dev Center dashboard, and the submission API will be updated later in July to let you manage these new assets through the API. More details about the upcoming API capabilities, including trailers and game options.

If you use the StoreBroker PowerShell module to simplify using the Windows Store submission API, you can keep using it to manage the same listing asset types you are managing today. However, you won’t be able to upload the new asset types using StoreBroker until the StoreBroker team publishes an update in a few more weeks, and you pick up that update.

More ways to promote apps and drive user acquisition, as it’s now possible to upload up to 15 video trailers of 1920 x 1080 pixel image (16:9), in promotional images section of Store listing. The trailers shows up after the video stops playing. See the screenshot above.

Submission overview page

Creating and updating Store listing content like description, images, keywords, etc., by importing and exporting listings, that reducing update time to just a few minutes.

More ways to manage prices and sales. The new pricing and availability page gives additional options to drive users to their first purchase, like:

You can now schedule an “app or game” to become available and discoverable in the Store, as well as a date when it should no longer be available for new acquisitions. Also, it’s now possible to schedule price changes in advance.

Schedule availability and pricing

Microsoft also added options to configure sales, including:

using percentage values such as “30% off”,

viewing sales options in prefered currency,

configuring sales globally or for specific markets,

offering discounts to customers that own one of your other apps (for example “50% off if you own this other game”)

and the ability to target a discount to a segment of customers (such as those that have not made any Store purchases so far).

View price tiers

There are also updates, that help view all possible price tiers in Excel, just go to Pricing and availability page, select view table, and simply view and export the table to CSV.

Dev can also now use CAB files to degug apps, and can also improve the quality and performance of their apps and games. “These CAB files are only available for customers running any of the Windows Insider flights of Windows 10 (slow or fast), so not all failures will include the CAB download option,” writes the team.

By using, Health report, you can easily pinpoint the OS and app version configurations that generate most crashes, and provides links to failure details with individual CAB files.

Deepak Gupta is a IT & Web Consultant. He is the founder and CEO of diTii.com & DIT Technologies, where he's engaged in providing Technology Consultancy, Design and Development of Desktop, Web and Mobile applications using various tools and softwares. Sign-up for the Email for daily updates. Google+ Profile.